Finalist in Best Radio/Podcast Media
Sruthi Pinnamaneni
In the winter of 1902, twelve young men in suits gather in the basement of a government building in Washington DC. Waiters serve them courses like chipped beef and applesauce. The men eat everything, though they know it has been spiked with an unnamed poison. The press called them the “Poison Squad.” Harvey Washington Wiley, the government chemist who ran this experiment, would become the founding father of the FDA. This is the story of Wiley and a colorful human experiment - one that began in a basement dining room and continues on our dinner plates today.
